VIII. CHURCH ORDINATION

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1 Timothy 1 : 3, "As I commanded thee to remain in Ephesus, going into Macedonia, in order that thou mayest command certain ones not to teach any other doctrine." The word here is heterodedaskalein) the meaning of it is not to teach heterodoxy. The Holy Ghost calls His own Word orthodox, which means the right opinion, and everything else heterodox, which means the opinion of another. God aHme is capable ,of delivering us the solid and unimpeachable truth. Well did Solomon say, "There is nothing new under the sun." The truth is all as old as God, who had no beginning. Consequently everything new is false. It may be new to you, simply beca•use it was never revealed to you; but others have known. it long ages before you were born.

When I was a boy I heard human creeds preached more than the Bible. Do not forget, we have no commission to preach anything but God's Word. When we preach our creed we have departed from our comm1ss10n. But you respond, "My creed ·is in perfect harmony with the Bible." If so, you do not .need it, because the Bible includes it, Therefore, go and preach your Bible "with the Holy Ghost sent down from Heaven."

Read history and you will find "orthodoxy and heresy" have been the battle cry of the ages. Multiplied millions of God's people have been killed on oharge of heresy and heterodoxy by the so-called Holy

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Catholic Church. This illustrates what the devil will do when he has a chance. He is the father of lies and liars. He has perverted everything that God has done, captured it and turned it to evil account. The last fifteen hundred years he has made the people believe that bloody, debauched Romanism is the Holy Catholic Church, and all dissenting from her dictation are heretics and tea.,ching heterodoxy. You must go to God for light, otherwise you will be· literally and hopelessly captured by Satan and his emissaries; e. g., the fallen Protestant churches are now· denouncing the Holiness people as hereties, and entire sanctification as heterodoxy.

Heresy is a Greek word and literally means separa• tion. Consequently when appropriated by an errorist, of course it means separation from them. Heterodoxy is the antithesis of orthodoxy and consequently means any and every kind of teaching except the plain, unsophisticated truth of the Bible. Hence you see the feasibility of the ready f( nd easy appropriation of these terms by Satan's churches, which in all ages have displayed great dexterity in their utilization as a pretext of apology for all the cruel persecutions they have waged against God's people; murdering millions of them on charge of being heretics and preaching heterodoxy.

All deflection and separation from the leadership of the personal Holy Ghost is heresy; while every other

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doctrine except the literal Word of God is heterodoxy. At the present day the popular pulpits resound with eloquent heterodoxy on the line of higher criticism, which is but another name fo-r infidelity ; even the lead• ing theologians of the Protestant denominations ren•• dering themselves prominent in the boldness of their attitude, repudiating the verbal plenary inspiration of the Scriptures; e. g.) a doctor of divinity, standing at the front of his denomination, teaching theology in one of the largest universities in America, in order to sustain his post-millennial views stated to the students that Paul was a 'pre-millennialist w·hen he wrote his Epistles to the Thessalonians, but afterwards changed his views and became a post-millennialist. While this is positively untrue in reference to Paul personally, which is c6nflrmed in 2 Timothy 4 : 1, "Before God and Christ Jesus, who is about to judge the living and the dead, I witness both His appearing and Hi~ kingdom, preach the Word." Verse 8, "Finally, there is a crown of righteousness laid up for me, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give me in that day, and not only to me, but also to all those who love His appearing with Divine love." This is Paul's valedictory just before he lost his head at Nero's block. You see he positively witnesses to the Lord's coming and to His kingdom, i. e.) that He is going to come and bring His kingdom with Him, which is none other than the millennial theooracy. Hence you ·see this great theologian,

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who stands at the head of a leading Protestant Church, expounding God's Word to the young preachers, positively misrepresents the Apostle Paul as having changed his views with reference to the pre-millennial coming of the Lord. 1Vhile I thus vindicate Paul from the charge of which he is not guilty, as you plainly see, yet this is not the serious phase of the matter. While it is a positive fact that Paul taught the pre-millennial coming of the Lord in al_l of his Epistles, yet do you not see that this bold criticism of the university dean against Paul is a positive impeachment of his ple:p.ary inspiration? If Paul, or any other Bible author, was simply giving his own opinion, which of course was liable to change; in that case we have no Bible, a;nd 2 Timothy 3: 16, "All Scripture is God-breathed," is not true. N. B.-The moment we give up the verbal plenary inspiration of the Scrpitures, our Bible is gone forever and worth no more than the good books written by uninspired men. 1Vhile I was preaching in Lowell, Mass., a great Protestant theologian, identified with a church making a loud boast of orthodoxy, publicly enunciated, "We no longer need the vicarious atonement; if Judas and Pilate had let Jesus alone, He would have lived on, as we did not need His death, but His life, to show us how to live." Of course he received much congratulation from Unitarians and Universalist~. I make these

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allusions to illustrate the alarming relaxation of the Protestant denominations with reference to the inspiration of the Scriptures.

When we do not recognize the Holy Ghost in His personal presence in our churches, and the Bible as His literal, actual and infallible Word, His precious guide-book from earth to Heaven., and Himself the omnicient Guide, escorting us in the use of His own Book, illuminating and revealing it to us; we have already lapsed away into heresy and heterodoxy.

This sad apostacy of the Protestant denominations into the infidelity of higher criticism is prominent among the signs of our Lord's near coming (2 Thess . .1: 3), and should prove an inspiration to God's true people in all the earth "to agonize for the faith once delivered to the saints." (Jude 3.)

We cannot depend on heretics to preach the Gospel. The Holy Ghost can only use those who are true to Him and His Word. The popular pulpits are pr~aching very little Gospel; they have gone away into endless diversities of heterodoxy, as that Word which is so strenuously condemned by Paul means anything and everything, except the straight, unadulterated Word of God.

CHAPTER VII.

CONNECTIONALISM.

This is all right, but like everything else, must · be in the Holy Ghost. Satan has used connectionalism to lift the flood gate and inundate the churches with pestilential corruptions, abuses, and heresies in all ages; utilizing financial emolument, human power and official preferment and aggrandizement, glittering titles, pomp, pageantry, priestcraft, prelacy and popery, in all ages to allure the ambition of the clergy and ofE cial laity, to seek places in the connectionalism of the church, proving vampires, sucking out every drop of spiritual blood, and leaving the poor thing a-lifeless corpse. This dark deluge of ecclesiastical corruption can only be avoided by keeping the flood gate thoroughly and tightly closed against it, as Satan has it constantly ready to pour in. There is just one simple practicable precaution, indispensably requisite in the case, and that is, keep filthy lucre forever_ out of the connectional economy, i. e.1 never pay a salary to any connectional officer. The great Protestant churches are all this day pouring out bushels of money on their 67

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big connectional men, every dollar of which ought to go to save the poor heathen.

Then how would we support our connectional officers, as they have no pastoral charges to minister unto them in temporal things?

That question is easily answered. Let the Holy Ghost appoint them, and rest easy about their support, for He is certain to attend to it, leaving all the people free to push the battle and save the lost millions of all lands. I refer to myself only illustratively, happily recognizing the fact that many others, whose names are in the book of life, more worthy than I, are also now used by the blessed Holy Ghost as. unsalaried officers of this great Holiness movement, preaching in all nations and fast enveloping the globe. Thus in the providence of God appointed, led, and supported by the Holy Ghost, we constitute the connectional ministry of the churches, which He has founded in all lands. It will be a sad day when· the Holiness people appoint a general superintendent with a stipulated salary to oversee the Holiness churches. Since the beginning of the movement, we have had connectional ministers, called and led by the Holy Ghost, traveling from ocean to ocean looking after the spiritual interest of the entire work. I travel ten to twenty thousand miles a year in the interest of the Holiness movement which is the Church of God, in all lands at the ' present day, and do not cost it one cent.

CONNECTIONALISM.

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"You must be rich."

In this you are utterly mistaken. I have never been worth any money. The Ho 1y Ghost calls, sends, and supports me as He does others whose names are-in the book of life. All of the ·apostles_, seventeen in number, as Paul, Barnabas, Apollos, James and Jude, the brothers of the Lord, and the original twelve, including Matthias, the elected successor of fallen Judas; were the connectiona1 officers of the Apostolic church, pursuant to the commission, with sovereign independency under the Holy Ghost. Our work is simply to preach the Gospel, do our utmost to get them all saved and gloriously sanctified, and keep them on, the Bible line, thoroughly fortified against the multitudinous sidetracking agencies of Satan, who so inveterately hates the Holiness people, that he is constantly scheming to deflect them from the King's Highway of Holiness, get them into the fog and bewildered, ere long entaniling them in the morasses of doctrinal heresies and :finally plunging them into the quagmires of open sin and transgression. We see no connectional system in the New Testament, except the personal ministry of the Apostles. Have they any successors? Oh, yes. Eph. 4: 11, "He gave ·some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and some teachers, for the perfecting of the saints, unto the work of the ministry, unto the edification of the body of Christ, until we may all arrive unto the unity of faith and the perfect know-

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ledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ, in order that we may be no longer infants, tossed by the waves and carried about by every wind of teaching at the caprice of men, in their legerdemain, for the purpose of delusion, but speaking the truth in Divine love let us grow up into Him in all things, who is the head, Christ, from whom the whole body being assimilated with Him and knitted together through every joint of the supply according to the working in t~e measure of each sev~ eral part~ causes the increase of the body in the up 0 building of itself in love." In thi8 long sentence, where Paul sets forth, in its beauty and grandeur the gracious economy appertaining to the Gospel Cburrh, it is utterly impossible to eliminate any of these offices without infringment and disintegration, seriously damaging to .the superstructure our Savior bled and died to erect, and sent the Holy Ghost to 'perpetuate, till He comes in His glory. Apostle simply means one sent by the Holy Ghost as a pioneer of the evangelistic work and general superintendent of the same.

We see no evidence anywhere in_ the New Testament that one local ekklesia (church) had authority over another. On the contrary, each one enjoyed sovereign independence, so far as local affairs and enterprises for the glory of God were concerned, under the immeJ diate guidance and presence of the Roly Ghost. Conseqmm.tly, we should never meddle with the lo('al affai~•fl